It seems like several new features are coming to Google’s keyboard app, Gboard. According to the source’s info provided by digging around the latest Gboard app for Android (v7.5), it seems like Google is preparing to introduce some sort of clipboard integration to Gboard, while a hotkey support for Chrome OS could be a part of a future update as well, even though it’s still not clear what will that hotkey be for. In any case, let’s take it one step at a time, and see what’s coming.
In the aforementioned teardown, the ‘access point’ in the name seems to refer to the screen where the clipboard button will exist, while the ‘clipboard’ is also mentioned in the code, and a clipboard icon popped up as well. Gboard v7.5 teardown did not reveal anything regarding the functionality of this clipboard feature, but we’re guessing it will function similarly to a regular clipboard manager. This teardown also reveals that Google is taking first steps towards Gboard and Chrome OS integration, following the announcement that Gboard is coming to Chrome OS. That announcement suggested that Gboard is coming to Chrome OS later this year, and it seems like that info is spot on. New lines have been discovered in Gboard which suggest that users will be able to assign behaviors to a key combination, in other words, create shortcuts.
Some new lines pop up referring a ‘floating keyboard’, which was mentioned in the last Gboard app teardown, while support for external hardware for Morse code seems to be on the way as well, at least according to the info found in Gboard v7.5. Gboard v7.5 also contains an internal setting whose purpose is to remove racy GIFs from search. All of these features / additions probably won’t arrive to Gboard all at once, but we at least know what to expect out of upcoming Gboard updates, even though the functionality of these additions (most of them) was not revealed, at least not entirely.